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Category: Thurston County Democrats (Page 10 of 10)

Membership compromise discussion

January 16, 2007 / / 0 Comments

When I first starting talking about some sort of compromise in terms of a rank and file membership in Thurston County, I was hoping there would be a healthy discussion on this blog, our county Democratic blog, or somewhere else. That didn’t happen, but after we discussed the idea last week at the county executive committee, I emailed the idea out again.

Since then, there has been a more than healthy email conversation. Not as public as I would have liked, but there have been some changes in how I’d propose the compromise now. Those changes are reflected here.

The nut of the compromise is that someone can’t just show up one day, pay their $20 and be a member. They have to prove their commitment through a series of options, such as being a member of a TCD committee. One of the changes to the propose bylaw outlines who decides when someone has been active enough to become a voting member. In the current draft, it would be the Executive Committee, in a manner similar to how they approve unelected PCOs.

While most of the emails discussing the change have been supportive, not all have, including Guy Hoyle-Dodson’s from this morning:

This is asinine. Are you deliberately trying to drive away involvement by rank and file democrats? This kind of strident money grubbing, pedantic exclusiveness, and distain for keeping the county party a truly open public institution will only end in the total irrelevance of the TCD. It is just the outcome that was feared when dues were thrust upon us two years ago. Then as now, it is not well thought out.

Don’t tread on Brian Baird

January 6, 2007 / / 0 Comments

There is going to be a peace march on January 27 in Olympia, and some folks involved in the planning want to make a short detour and involved Rep. Brian Baird’s Olympia office. That Baird has voted for funding the Iraq War after voting against authorizing it seems to be the issue.

Protesting in front of, inside of, or occupying the office of Rep. Baird is a bad idea. Its about as a bad idea as I’ve ever heard.

I’m convinced the only reason its being considered is because his office is directly on the parade route. Had the parade gone a different direction or had Baird’s office been up on the west side or even down on Plum St., no one would be talking about involving his office in the protest.

Baird is a target of convenience, not conscious.

Baird voted no on authorizing the war.

It is also bad politics. The WSDCC is also meeting in Olympia that day (several of the members are taking time out of the meetings to participate in the march) and several local Dems are helping organize the march. Including a protest of a Democratic elected official, you put the Dems, at least in Thurston County, in a bad place.

Apparently, the desire to include Baird’s Olympia office in the protest is coming from the national level of one of the organizations that is also helping put together the march. This just may be an example of something that may seem like a good idea thousands of miles away, but when you look at it close up, isn’t that good of an idea at all.

There will be a meeting on Monday where this will all be hashed out, hopefully in favor of not treading on Brian.

Anti-social social network: Democratic Party Builder

December 28, 2006 / / 0 Comments


The fatal flaw of the Democratic Party’s Party Builder social networking platform is that you can prevent people from finding you. On a list of people registered at Party Builder close to zip code 98501 only three people show up inside Thurston County.

On the Thurston County Democrats group that I manage, there are five members. Two don’t have names (just “Democrat in Olympia WA”) because they aren’t friends of mine and they have decided to let other people know who they are.

When you sign up for Party Builder you are given the option to remain unknown to anyone else on the system, aside from your friends. This will end up killing Party Builder.

If you can remained unsearchable, unbrowsable, uninvitable, and unseen in a social network, you simply don’t exist. And, if a lot of people choose not to be seen within a network, no actual social networking is going to happen. No one is going to message anyone else, no one is going to read anyone’s blog, no one is going to be invited to any groups or become friends who wouldn’t already be friends because of an offline relationship.

And, by the way, if you join a social network and just want to be left alone, then I have no idea what to tell you.

Changing the Democratic Party (in Thurston County)

December 21, 2006 / / 0 Comments

I posted a couple of ideas (here and here) on some bylaw changes for the Thurston County Democrats. We’re supposed to have a meeting in early January to cover whatever changes we want in the bylaws.

The first is pretty substantive, it would give a vote to any paid member who participates at a certain level. Like an earned vote.

The second is more philosophical in nature.

Many times when a PCO suggests a particular course of action, another PCO will counter that it doesn’t mesh well enough with our major goal of “electing Democrats.” Usually the course of action is something nice, like sending a check to the food bank or something else equally nice. While it may make the world a better place, it doesn’t “elect Democrats” in the same manner that buying ad space or donating to campaigns does, so its out the door.

The sad thing is, local political parties used to be about more than “electing Democrats.” It used to be that local parties and Democratic clubs were “political organization one day in the year; … a charitable-benevolent fraternal organization three hundred and sixty five.”

I think we should get back to something more like that, an organization that is good by being good. Let the various campaign committees be campaign committees.

More on this kind of thinking at Blue Tiger Democrats.

Caucuses aren’t enough

April 13, 2006 / / 0 Comments

This past weekend at the Thurston County Democratic convention we were all done with writing our platform, almost ready to go home, when we considered one more resolution: to cancel the 2010 precinct caucuses. The reasoning behind the resolution, which ended up failing badly, was that this year’s precinct caucuses were too expensive, too stiff and too poorly attended to justify holding caucuses again during an off year.

While I understand why the resolution failed, I still think reforming our caucus system is important. In an non-Presidential year, the precinct caucus process is there to start writing the county party’s platform. People don’t typically show up because they see little at stake in simply writing a party’s platform. In an era of low participation and nearly non-existent turnout to caucuses, the process rewards people who stick through the entire process, not good or popular ideas. An idea only needs support among the few that show up to the convention, not the majority of Democrats in any county.

The caucus system decades ago, when people were politically engaged, when more people simply showed up, were an important way to ensure local interests where represented in state and national platforms. But, today, there are different ways to do things.

Thurston County and the 43rd LD both held topic specific pre-caucus issue forums to kick-start the conversation on writing the platform. I think we should pull the platform writing process out of the caucuses in 2008 and 2010 and do more of what happened in Thurston County and the 43rd. In addition to developing online tools, we need to move away from the stiff caucus/convention format to write our platform.

More conversation, more informal.

UPDATE: here is the actual resolution, for your reference.

Open source county party platform

January 9, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Maybe open-source is an exaggeration, every party platform is usually pretty democratic. But, there is a point to where people don’t get involved or engaged in writing the platform of the party they identify with.

This year, the Thurston County Democratic Party is holding a series of open, public forums ahead of the precinct caucuses to start the conversation about what our platform should say.

Each in-person forum will also have a parallel online forum. While most of the topics have already been lined up, one of the in-person forums will have its topic determined by online comments.

Usually, folks show up to the caucuses and talk, over a few hours, about what the platform should include. Every four years, we also talk about who should be President, but this isn’t one of those years, so all we’re talking about is the platform.

This year, we’re getting a kick start on that conversation.

Each of the five forums (except one) will cover a section of the previous platform (such as healthcare or the economy). So instead showing up on a Saturday morning with a few ideas, we’re going to be talking together over, hopefully, a couple months to publicly brainstorm a platform.

The one open topic forum is in Bucoda, a small community in south Thurston County. Instead of limiting the topic of that forum, we wanted people to feel as welcome as possible to discuss any part of the platform they’d like.

My hope is that folks that wouldn’t ordinarily go to a weekend caucus would come to a public forum offering the opportunity to talk about what we should be fighting for. Or, others might feel more open to do the same thing online. Either way, the ideas generated online and in the forums will be forwarded to each of the caucuses for consideration. They have to be approved there, and then they’ll proceed through the traditional platform process.

March 24, 2003 / / 0 Comments

Only in Olympia could Jeanette Hawkins be seen as a conservative, even akin to Kevin O’Sullivan.

Oh, poor Olympia. So many of us really don’t know what the hell is going on, reality from perception and what a real liberal is. For one thing, Jeanette Hawkins is not a conservative, not even in a conservative Democrat sort of way. She is liberal. Maybe not as liberal Ralph Nader, but liberal none the less. Only in Olympia, where your middle is left and the right wing is seen as facist, could Jeanette ever be seen as a righty.

She’s not even Kevin O, who fought for four years as a county commissioner, as several more as county assesor, trying to be the best Scoop Jackson Democrat he could be. Eventually, he got kicked out of the party and joined his rightful clan in Lewis County.

Now adays, I assume the greatest insult you can give a fellow lefty if you don’t think they’re cool enough is “your just like Kevin O’Sullivan, an evil GOPer in Demo’s clothing.”

Oooooh, aaaah, remember though, Jeanette’s got the best anti-Kevin creds of any of us: she called out O’Sullivan hard during those heady days of shoreline rules protests.

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